Start emacs with `emacs -Q`, press C-x C-f and type in a filename that ends in .py like "foo.py". Then type in: x = 3 rf"hello {x} world" The whole string will be colored as a string literal. r means "raw" which means no escape sequences and f means this is a format string where we can interpolate variables like x. Delete the leading 'r' and the highlighting will change so that {x} is not highlighted, since it's code. However, raw and format strings are not mutually exclusive and it should be considered code in both cases. If you run the snippet above in the interpreter you will get "hello 3 world". In GNU Emacs 28.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, cairo version 1.16.0, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2021-05-14 built on eruv Repository revision: efc24f1e0bb127481bcc9c3054c57c4cd3c99aa9 Repository branch: master Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12013000 System Description: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS